Google reportedly mulls investing in a hypersonic tunnelling boring company
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a race on to increase the speed of boring tunnels by at least ten fold, and if it can be achieved it will change the economics of energy generation and transportation. Google announced recently, quietly, very quietly, that it’s carrying out research...
MIT and DeepMind’s new AI can’t be tricked with weird lighting
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we produce more systems that rely on machine vision to do their jobs or keep people safe, systems that can’t see the world accurately pose both a danger and a risk. Machine Vision has come a long way since Imagenet, a large repository of labelled...
Blackberry’s AI Robo-hacker gets to work finding bugs in connected cars code
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more products become reliant on software to function, and as programs get increasingly complex, human developers are finding it increasingly difficult to find and patch all the bugs and vulnerabilities. As cars, especially self-driving ones, become more reliant on software it’s critical automakers...
World first as Waymo’s self-driving taxi service opens to the public
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many people think the future takes a long time to arrive, when in matter of fact it’s arriving faster than it ever has in the past, and now that Waymo’s service is live others will quickly follow. Self-driving taxis, the type that stay on...
Musk unveils his newest transportation concept for Los Angeles
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the roads get more congested and as people become more mobile autonomous, high speed transportation networks give urban planners new transportation options. Elon Musk’s The Boring Company posted a concept video last year that showed cars entering tunnels on skates, where they hurtled 130 mph...
Denvers new “Hyperloop for roads” will transport cars at 200mph around the city
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One good idea leads to another, so they say, and now Denver thinks it can use an adaptation of the Hyperloop to reduce urban commute times. Start-up co-founder Brogan BamBrogan has an unusual stance when it comes to the futuristic technology he’s building, which...
Scientists have smashed the record for the world’s most powerful magnet
WHY THIS MATTES IN BRIEF Magnets are the unsung heroes of the modern era, they help produce our energy and make engines work, make MRI machines possible and make futuristic transportation technologies like the Hyperloop feasible, and developments in the field drive innovation across a variety of sectors. If...
China launches the world’s first fully electric cargo ship
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Cargo ships are by far the most polluting types of “vehicles” on the planet, all be the fact they carry huge weights of cargo, but now the industry is starting to electrify and the result will be an environmental revolution. Ground transport, closely followed...
World first as scientists manage to make carbon fiber using plants, not oil
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The knock on impact of being able to produce cheap carbon fiber at scale could help us create stronger, lighter drones, prosthetics and robots, as well as improve the fuel economy of all manner of vehicles, from aircraft to cars. Carbon fiber is the...
Quantum sensor breakthrough could one day replace global GPS systems
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today’s sensors are sensitive, but Quantum sensors are millions times more sensitive, meaning that they can detect even more things with even more accuracy. Thanks to the miracle of GPS we can now work out where we are almost anywhere on Earth, but it...
RB Systems unveil their awesome Hyperloop Terminal concept
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF New ideas and concepts, such as the Hyperloop, are sometimes hard to grasp, so being able to visualise them, and how they would work in society is often crucial to their final success. Late last year, Hyperloop One who recently ran their prototype Hyperloop at...
Re-imagining retail, Robomart unveil their autonomous, mobile shop concept
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As society starts to get used to the idea of autonomous vehicles it’s giving companies the opportunity to re-imagine entire industries. As companies start to realise that the future of transportation will inevitably be autonomous there are an increasing number of start-ups, as well...
Toyota’s autonomous vehicle concept signals the death of the car
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By 2040 the concept of the car will be dead, replaced instead by autonomous multi-modal pods, and this is Toyota’s vision of a possible future. As we begin to stare the death of the car in the face, with even companies like Audi realising...
MIT’s Rapid Liquid Printing technology could be the future of furniture
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 3D printing will undoubtedly change how the world makes goods, but it’s still expensive and slow, now we’re seeing a slew of new technologies that are trying to speed up manufacturing and change the game. Coming hot on the heels of another new 3D...
Researchers have taught robots to predict the consequences of their future actions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to predict the consequences of our actions is a vital human ability, and until now it’s one that robots have sorely lacked. We tell our children all the time that their actions have consequences, and today, as you’d more and more robots are capable...
European giants team up to build electric aircraft
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Aviation is one of today’s biggest polluters so now companies are ploughing more effort into building the world’s first viable electric aircraft. In March this year Rolls Royce’s CEO announced that the future of flight was electric, and this week Airbus, Rolls Royce and Siemens announced...
Nvidia’s newest AI turns sunny streets into snow filled ones in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Leaps in computing performance are letting AI’s produce real time, photo realistic fake video footage that has a variety of applications, from training self-driving cars to helping create fake news. As everyone knows, or at least can suspect, the sunny weather in California is...
Samsung unveils their new ultra fast charging, energy dense battery
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When asked what irritates them most about their smartphones most people reply battery life, but Samsung’s latest breakthrough might mean we have to moan about something else. All our mobile devices have been hamstrung for ages by their reliance on traditional Lithium-Ion (LiOn) batteries...
Wireless charging, the next frontier for electric vehicles gains traction
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Just as countries are starting to get used to the idea of rolling out fixed electric vehicle charging stations a new technology is emerging on the scene that could quickly render them obsolete. Just as we are beginning to get used to the idea...
Audi unveils a future without cars
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Most people think that self-driving cars are simply the next natural evolution of the car when actually they signal the death of the car as we know it. Not all concept cars make it off the auto show floor and into production, but now,...
